Limp EU support for Greek crisis

They made the offer in an attempt to defuse fears about the future of the euro and the EU's hesitant economic recovery.

Nervous financiers worldwide are watching for concrete assurances that the EU can help Greece stave off defaulting on its debt and keep the crisis from spreading to other vulnerable economies.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were closeted for talks with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and EU President Herman Van Rompuy before wider EU discussions.

But even as the leaders discussed ways to reduce Athens's debt, Greek taxi drivers struck against the government austerity programme cooked up in close collaboration with EU mandarins.

The taxi drivers mounted their action one day after a general strike by public-sector workers closed hospitals and schools and grounded flights.

The cab drivers are angry because the austerity measures which will usher in a public-sector wage freeze and raise the retirement age will also ramp up fuel taxes and oblige the self-employed to issue receipts.

The Socialist government hopes that this will rein in wide-spread tax evasion, but taxi drivers complain it will be too expensive for them to install receipt machines in their cabs.

Taxi owners' union general secretary Efthymios Lymberopoulos said: "We deem they are wrong measures that come from American-trained economists and neoliberal 'Golden Boys' from Brussels who will bring our society to its knees."

Their strike coincided with the release of a national statistics service report which revealed that unemployment rose to a five-year high of 10.6 per cent in November 2009, up from 9.8 per cent in October.

A total of 531,953 Greeks were without jobs in November, about 41,000 more than in October and nearly 147,000 more than in November 2008 when the unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent.

n The European Parliament has voted down a deal that would have allowed Washington to access European bank transfers to track funds supporting suspected terror groups.

MEPs in Strasbourg voted 378-196 against the deal with 31 abstentions.

The parliament's president Jerzy Buzek said that the assembly wanted more safeguards for civil liberties and believe human rights had been compromised in the name of security.